Dasha's Betrothal

Fifty years ago, trading Moscow—its “city”—still clung to the old, Moscow look it had once had, nearly the same as it was “before the French.” Where today narrow lanes are lined with imposing steel-and-glass buildings, where, in a continuous stream filling the whole roadway, there roll spring-driven carts, rubber-tired hacks, and automobiles, where behind mirrored shop windows one can see steady clerks from major “trading houses,” dressed in the latest fashion—half a century earlier, in low, sometimes one-story houses, and in countless passage courtyards, gloomy “shops” and “warehouses” crowded together. At their doors, the poor Moscow “Vanka” hawkers and plain, naive “merchants” would slow down, while in the depths, solid “young toughs”—“lads” in caps and jackets—waited for customers, as if they were hunters waiting for their prey…